But last week's vicious acid attack on Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi's artistic director who now faces partial blindness, has brought the corruption and infighting at the prestigious ballet company at the heart of Russian cultural life, out of the shadowy wings and on to the global stage.

Vicious internal politics have been blamed for the incident, which has left some of its former stars describing the jewel of Russia's artistic heritage as a "disgusting cesspool" where the culture is "pathologically cruel".

Mr Filin, 42, was walking home after a party in Moscow on Thursday night when a masked attacker emerged from the darkness and called out his name before throwing acid in his face. His first thought was that he was about to be assassinated. Speaking from his hospital bed, his face wrapped in bandages, he said: "I saw his hand... and thought he was going to shoot me."

Mr Filin suffered third-degree burns to his face and neck, and is now in danger of losing his vision. He underwent 15 hours of emergency surgery and is expected to remain in hospital in Moscow for a week, after which he may be moved to the Military Burns Centre in Brussels, Belgium, for further surgery in a desperate attempt to save his sight. His wife, the Bolshoi dancer Maria Prorvich, said: "I now fear for his life, even for those of our children."

Mr Filin said: "This is linked to my work - someone doesn't like that I'm successfully leading the Bolshoi Theatre."

His theory is shared by almost everyone in Moscow. Immediately after the assault, the police, Bolshoi officials and leading ballet figures said that they believed it had come from within the ballet community.

While the viciousness of the attack has shocked Moscow, it appears not to have come as a complete surprise to Mr Filin's friends and colleagues. They have spoken of a months-long campaign of intimidation and harassment, during which he received threatening phone calls and had his car repeatedly vandalised. Earlier this month, his email and telephone accounts were also hacked.

Anatoly Iksanov, the general director of the Bolshoi, who had been in meetings with Mr Filin shortly before the attack, said: "I am 100 per cent confident that it is linked to his work. The aim of the attack was to undermine the theatre management. He told me he felt like he was on the frontlines."

On Saturday, before visiting Mr Filin in hospital, Mr Iksanov told The Sunday Telegraph that there were many reasons for performers to be disgruntled with the management, from disappointment over casting decisions to artistic quarrels about direction of the theatre.

He said: "Sergei is a very principled man in that respect. He has a vision, and he will stick to it - and he won't cast dancers if he has any doubt that they are right for the role."

Katerina Novikova, a spokesman for the Bolshoi, revealed the disturbing atmosphere of intimidation that Mr Filin, and those in whose footsteps he followed, had faced at the ballet, where 200 dancers compete fiercely for roles.

"Sergei was constantly receiving threats after he took up this post and his predecessors were under attack before him," Miss Novikova said. "But we never thought that this war for roles, not real estate or oil, could reach such a criminal level.

"We always wanted to believe that people connected with theatre would have a minimal level of morality.

"This monstrous attack was surely committed by a person who knew him. They wanted to damage his face, because there is no doubt he was one of the most handsome dancers of his generation. And they wanted to damage his eyes, because without his sight, of course, he can never direct a ballet."

The Bolshoi has been the scene of infighting and artistic clashes for decades. For more than 30 years, it was run as what has been described as a "Stalinist dictatorship" by Yuri Grigorovich, the Soviet stalwart who oversaw a reign of terror where dancers lived in constant fear of being sacked.

He was finally ousted in 1995 over his refusal to update the Bolshoi's repertoire following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but returned in 2008 to oversee performances of some of his classic works and, aged 86, has a god-like status among many of the ballet's dancers and teachers.

Alexei Ratmansky, the Bolshoi's former artistic director, won praise for attempting to modernise the Bolshoi from 2004 to 2008, but eventually resigned, hampered by the company's internal politics and continued opposition from the old guard, still loyal to Grigorovich.

He wrote on his Facebook page last week: "What happened with Sergei Filin was not accidental. The Bolshoi has many ills. It's a disgusting cesspool, of those developing friendships with the artists, the speculators and scalpers, the half-crazy fans ready to bite the throats of the rivals of their favourites... This is all one snowball caused by the lack of any ethics at the theatre."

Mr Filin, a feted former dancer who graduated from dance school in 1988, rose through the ranks of the Bolshoi. In 2008 he briefly left to oversee the Stanislavsky Ballet Theatre in Moscow, but returned to the Bolshoi as artistic director in 2011.

He is seen as a bridge between the old and the new, a director striving to strike a balance between the conservatives and the modernisers, creating a repertoire of both Grigorovich's old classics and newer works.

But even his appointment was overshadowed by scandal. Gennady Yanin, at the time the deputy director of the Bolshoi, departed from his role a week after Mr Filin's appointment, when photographs of him apparently in bed with other men were posted on the internet. There were suggestions that these had been leaked by a rival within the company who was loyal to Grigorovich.

With homosexuality a major taboo for most Russians, Mr Yanin had no option but to leave.

But there were departures among traditionalists as well: shortly afterwards, Ivan Vasiliev, the ballet's star principal dancer and Natalia Osipova, another young talent, resigned in protest at the Bolshoi's more progressive artistic programme, defecting to the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St Petersburg.

Since Mr Filin took the reins, tensions have continued, including infamous clashes with Nikolai Tsiskaridze, the ballet's flamboyant principal dancer who has twice lost out on the top job at the Bolshoi and is known for his devotion to Grigorovich.

Mr Tsiskaridze, 39, has ambitions to run the company and restore its Soviet ethos and tradition - but is described by Mr Iksanov as "a troublemaker" who was "pouring dirt" on the Bolshoi in his public briefings against its current management.

The dancer, however, recently described the atmosphere within the Bolshoi as Darwinian. "If you don't eat them, they'll eat you," he said.

His dissatisfaction with how things are run has even reached the Kremlin, with a group of his supporters petitioning President Vladimir Putin last year requesting that Mr Filin and his allies be sacked, and he be appointed director of the Bolshoi.

"He is against everyone in the leadership of the theatre," Ms Novikova said yesterday. "I would never accuse him of involvement in what just happened, but with all this complaining, with everything he's been doing, he has created an air of negativity."

But Mr Tsiskaridze was dismissive of the attack on Mr Filin, and has suggested that it may have been motivated by a business deal or love affair gone awry. "This all means nothing to me," he said. "I have nothing to do with it."

On Saturday, Mr Iksanov insisted that he was not implicating Mr Tsiskaridze in the incident, but confirmed that the dancer had "extremely bad relations" with the ballet's management.

Several more dancers have also publicly complained about unfair treatment by Mr Filin, but others have leapt to his defence since the attack. Svetlana Zakharova, the prima ballerina, said: "The troupe had been revived, we had very good plans and interesting work."

Jann Parry, the dance writer, said that the most likely motivation for the attack lay with supporters of Grigorivich and Mr Tsiskaridze. She said: "Grigorovich had a fiefdom that controlled everything, and even though he is now 86, he still has many supporters within the ballet, including Tsiskaridze who say 'Bring back the old regime'.

"Tsiskaridze is incredibly ambitious to become artistic director, at 39 he is coming to the end of his career as a dancer.

"He has fanatical fans who are determined to do absolutely anything to get Filin out. It may well be that the whole thing is out of his control and some lunatic fan has committed this particularly vicious, personal attack."

Yesterday, Mr Tsiskaridze was unavailable for comment. However, in an interview with a Russian newspaper after the attack, he said: "I am totally innocent."

The Bolshoi is due to visit London this summer to perform a three-week season at the Royal Opera House, the first under Mr Filin's directorship. The huge power that the head of the ballet wields, and the friction that creates, was described after the attack by Anastasia Volochkova, a former ballerina there who won an unfair dismissal case against the Bolshoi after losing her job for being too "heavy".

Describing "the cruelty of the ballet world" as "pathological", she said in a Russian radio interview: "Sergei didn't do anything he could be condemned for but the head of the ballet decides everything - what grants each artist receives or maybe won't receive; who will dance certain roles and who won't dance them.

"That conflicts are decided in this way at the Bolshoi - all this lawlessness, corruption and anti-humanity - it's the sign of the end."